


When The Poetry Stops

by muse_in_absentia



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Chapter retelling, Gen, Grief, Minor Character Death, Protest Gone Wrong, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26562295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muse_in_absentia/pseuds/muse_in_absentia
Summary: When the protest goes wrong not everyone makes it to safety.(A modern retelling of the death of Jehan from the Brick)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: 2020 Brick ReNouveauTions





	When The Poetry Stops

**Author's Note:**

> I did a lot of vagaries for this. Given the current political climate I didn't want to get too specific, seeing as that was not the point of this story so much as the retelling. 
> 
> Also, I had to leave out certain details from the original, like Javert, which does rather change the tone of some things, but I couldn't find a way to make that fit with a modern adaptation without it _also_ changing the tone in a way I wasn't comfortable with. So please forgive my slight alterations to make this make sense.
> 
> Lastly, a huge thank you to [surefireshore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surefireshore/pseuds/surefireshore) for the amazing beta help. You made this so much cleaner and clearer.  
> And also thank you to [ShitpostingfromtheBarricade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade) for hosting this event!

The air still burned with the edges of tear gas, diluted by distance, but still sharp and acrid. Most of the crowd had managed to scatter before it had been launched at them, but many of them still had scarves and shirts pulled over their faces, were breathing shallowly with eyes narrowed to reddened slits. People were stumbling, blinded, falling. Some didn’t get back up. 

They had scattered in all directions, trying to evade the police. Most will even get lucky in that. Not all. Not after riot control had shown up and started using hoses and rubber bullets. 

Mabeuf had been trying to usher some of the younger protesters away when the rubber bullets had started to fly. Marius had watched, unable to do anything, as Mabeuf as intentionally put himself between the officers and a group of younger teenagers who were still trying to run. The first rubber bullet had hit him in the arm, spinning him just enough for the second to hit him directly over the heart. It shouldn’t have been enough to cause more than a solid bruise, but Mabeuf was old, and Marius could see the way he sputtered, and then collapsed, eyes rolled back in his head, one hand still pressed where the rubber bullet had struck. Then he was lost among the running feet of the crowd. 

Some of his friends, mostly Bahorel and Enjolras, had tried to get to Mabeuf, to help him up, but he was engulfed before they could even get close and they had to keep moving before they were bowled over themselves. Marius wasn’t sure he would ever get the image of it out of his head again, the way Mabeuf’s hand had twitched long after he had stopped moving. 

A few streets over from where the protest had started, Marius watched nervously as Bahorel used a pocketknife to pry up a piece of cracked pavement, and then Combeferre and Feuilly started wrenching the boards off the window to a small café. The tension vibrated through the group, like an electric charge jumping from person to person, until they were all jittery with it; skittish eyes darting around, and bloody fists still clenched. Marius leaned against Courfeyrac who leaned back into him, neither of them saying a word. 

As soon as the glass was exposed, Bahorel used the chunk of pavement to shatter it so they could get inside. There was a surge of bodies towards the opening, but Bahorel and Combeferre blocked the entrance, motioning for Grantaire and Joly, who were hauling an injured Bossuet between them, to go first. 

“Injured first,” Combeferre called out, voice steady and calm, firm enough that the mob slowed, allowing those who had been hurt to move to the front. Then the rest of the group tumbled inside, Marius practically collapsing into relative safety, one of the last inside before Feuilly boarded the window back up behind them. 

Despite the boards once again covering the broken window, they could still hear the sounds of rioting and running just outside. Marius felt bad for ignoring the cries, but they couldn’t have opened the window back up even if they had more space. It was no longer possible to tell if the footsteps pounding past were protesters or riot police. 

As soon as they were inside, out of the view of the streets, Courfeyrac flung himself on Marius, burying his face in Marius’ neck. He let Courfeyrac cling to him for a moment before gently disentangling himself, not wanting to upset Courfeyrac, but also not ready to face whatever Courfeyrac was going to have to say. 

“You showed up just in time,” Courfeyrac said, reaching out to hug him again. Marius stepped back, but Courfeyrac just smiled, exhausted, and slung an arm around his shoulders anyway. Knowing when to give up, Marius left him draped there, half holding him up, and tried to smile at him. He didn’t truly mind the comfort, and he knew Courfeyrac knew that or he would have stopped. There was just a level of discomfort surrounding the reasons for it that Marius was hoping to avoid, and having Courfeyrac cling to him felt like accepting comfort for the wrong reasons. He hugged Courfeyrac back anyway. 

“It was fairly lucky for us,” Combeferre added, taking Courfeyrac off of Marius and depositing him in a chair. 

Marius didn’t think it was luck so much as desperation, but he didn’t say anything. 

His friends had been in trouble, and the police officer in front of him hadn’t seen him, because he had gotten to the protest late. He had just grabbed the cannister of tear gas, one of the few that hadn’t been thrown into the crowd already, and threatened to open it on the police if they didn’t let his friends through. He knew it would have ended with a face full of tear gas for himself, and resulted in a trip to a jail cell or worse, but he hadn’t cared. He had been finding it hard to care lately. 

He could still feel the heavy metal canister weighing down his hand, fingers curling into empty air against the phantom sensation. 

Marius knew that it had been a police plant that threw the bottle at the watching officers when things were quiet and there had been no excuse for arrests. It meant that no one could blame his friends for what had happened, but that didn’t calm the adrenaline that was still running through him. Knowing that there were officers involved who were willing to risk lives to prove a point just left him feeling nauseous; anxiety spiraling through him, making him shove his hands into his pockets to keep anyone else from seeing them shake. 

“I’m fairly certain you saved our lives,” Courfeyrac said, interrupting Marius’ thoughts and pulling him back to the present where they were all huddled inside a boarded-up café trying to figure out what to do next. “Or at least saved us from jail cells.” 

“I would have been trampled,” Gavroche added, appearing out of nowhere beside Courfeyrac and dropping down to sit on the floor where he let Courfeyrac ruffle his hair without making too much fuss. 

Marius saw Mabeuf’s hand twitching again, and he had to look away from Gavroche, small enough to have easily been lost beneath the surging crowds. 

“Where’s Enjolras?” Marius asked, looking around, uncomfortable with all the praise he was getting for an act he hadn’t thought about beyond the undertaking of it. Sitting in one of the chairs himself, he looked around for his friends. Besides the few clustered around him, he couldn’t find most of them. 

A not inconsiderable group of protesters had followed them in, but Marius did not recognize them. People caught up in the moment, who were now simply trying to avoid arrest. There were spatters of blood, and more tears than not, on faces of those who hadn’t escaped the tear gas. 

“I’m not sure,” Courfeyrac said, looking around as well. “Enjolras!” 

Marius winced at the shout, reverberatingly loud amid the dull murmur of hushed voices. 

“Here,” Enjolras answered, breaking away from a group in the back as he spoke up, catching Marius’ eye as he pushed forward through the crowd, coming in to a range that Marius wouldn’t have to strain to hear him over the rumble of voices. 

Some of the maelstrom that had been whirling around his head settled, pressed to the back of his mind for a moment. All thoughts of Cosette moving away, of the way the protest had gone completely wrong, capitulating into riot at the slightest outside provocation, of kindly Mabeuf falling to his ideals, all the fears and anger and loss that had been swirling around his mind calming for a brief moment before the thunderclap released. 

“Do you have a plan?” he asked Enjolras, waiting for the almost guaranteed yes. Enjolras always had a plan. 

“I think I should be asking you that,” Enjolras said instead, causing Marius to startle. “You’re the one with plans for saving our asses today.” 

Marius wasn’t ready to face having everyone depend on him, and he just stared up at Enjolras hoping that it was some sort of joke, but no plan of action was forthcoming, and finally Marius dropped his gaze, knowing he didn’t have any ideas either. 

A makeshift medical center had cropped up near the door, tables shoved together into triage beds. Joly and Combeferre were doing the best they could to treat the injured with what little they could find. Washing faces and cleaning cuts and scrapes, stemming bleeding where they could, tearing up shirts for bandages where they couldn’t. Marius watched them and thought about going and offering his hands, even though he was sure he would be more in the way than helpful. He didn’t move. 

“Maybe we should wait here for a while,” Feuilly said, looking between Marius and Enjolras. “Check the news, see what’s happening out there. We still all have our phones.” 

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Marius said, jumping on the plan. “Is everyone safely here?” 

Enjolras stopped abruptly and looked around, but there were too many bodies in too small a space, and Marius watched his face fall as he realized he couldn’t tell, and hadn’t thought to ask. 

“Send a text?” Marius asked, already trying to work his own phone out of his pocket without having to stand. 

Enjolras was faster, and Marius leaned back while Enjolras tapped out a quick text. He almost smiled when his own phone buzzed, a message coming through to the group chat from Enjolras asking for a status update from everyone. The group chat was usually used for fun and friendship, and even now seeing a notification beside it made Marius feel slightly happier before he remembered what it was for. 

Grantaire, Bahorel, Feuilly, and Courfeyrac answered quickly enough. A reply came from Joly’s phone a moment later, from Bossuet checking in for himself, Joly, and Combeferre who were both too busy to send their own texts. 

There was no answer from Jehan. Marius kept watching his phone, but there was nothing. 

“Maybe he can’t hear it?” 

“I’ll go look,” Feuilly said, standing up and heading into the crowd of people, but Marius wasn’t holding out hope. It was crowded, but not so crowded that they wouldn’t have found him in a matter of minutes. Someone would have said he was with them by now. 

“Guys,” Grantaire called out, making sure he was heard over the din, skidding up alongside Enjolras, phone in hand. “I think you need to see this.” 

Marius stood up and the three of them crowded around Grantaire’s phone, watching as a live feed showed the riots going on outside. 

The footage was grainy, shaking and clearly coming from someone’s phone. Marius watched as the police dragged protesters away, some in cuffs, some barely standing on their own. At the front of the crowd stood Jehan, handcuffed and bleeding from the head. 

“Fuck,” Grantaire said quietly, the hand not holding his phone gripping Enjolras’ arm. Marius echoed the sentiment silently. 

“Send that to the chat,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. 

Grantaire took the phone back for a split second so he could share it. Marius clicked the link open on his own phone and sank back into his seat, the noise of the room fading into nothing as he focused in on the tiny images moving across his screen. 

Jehan was shouting something, but there was no sound, just his face growing red as his mouth moved, shoulders arched back, chin jutting forward. A slow rust colored trickle dripped from his forehead down to his jaw and off his chin, his hair matted to his head with it. 

The officer with a grip on his arm shoved him forward and Jehan stumbled. Marius jolted forward as if he could catch him, through the screen, drag him to safety somehow. 

Jehan hit the ground, head glancing off the pavement when his cuffed hands couldn’t catch him. Marius heard a gasp from Enjolras or Grantaire but didn’t look up to see which of them made it. He wasn’t sure it mattered. They were all feeling the same. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that even Joly and Combeferre had stopped their ministrations and were focused on their phones. 

It felt like no one breathed until Jehan stood back up, wobbly, eyes unfocused, but standing. He was yanked roughly forward again, and this time, when he fell he collapsed into the back of another officer. 

Marius only realized his hand was shaking when he couldn’t make out the screen on his phone anymore, and Courfeyrac carefully pried his fingers off the phone, holding it for both of them, the heat of his body a grounding point of focus as Marius leaned back on Courfeyrac’s legs, trying to use the contact to tether himself. 

As Jehan lay on the ground a second time, still sprawled on top of the officer he had fallen into, he was surrounded by uniforms, and all Marius could see was the truncheon coming down, and then coming back up again, red. 

The screen blurred, and he swiped at his eyes, knowing that he needed to see this out, to bear witness so that when the video was inevitably erased from the internet at least he will have known. They will have seen. 

He heard crying, and it could have been coming from anyone. Coming from everyone. He could taste his own tears as they ran down his face, and he breathed them in in a deep shuddering gasp, but still he watched. 

The sea of uniforms slowly dissipated. 

Jehan lay still on the ground. He didn’t move.


End file.
